Canada and the Canadians Volume I ppt

CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
Canada and the Canadians, by
Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
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Title: Canada and the Canadians Volume I
Author: Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
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Canada and the Canadians, by 1
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CANADA
AND
THE CANADIANS.
BY
SIR RICHARD HENRY BONNYCASTLE, KT.,
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL ROYAL ENGINEERS AND MILITIA OF CANADA WEST.
NEW EDITION.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1849.
F. Shoberl, Jnr. Printer to H.R.H Prince Albert, Rupert Street.
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.
Canada and the Canadians, by 2
CHAPTER I.
Emigrants And Immigration Page 1
CHAPTER I. 3
CHAPTER II.
The Emigrant and his Prospects 46
CHAPTER II. 4
CHAPTER III.
A Journey to the Westward 90
CHAPTER III. 5
CHAPTER IV.
The French Canadian 127
CHAPTER IV. 6
CHAPTER V.
Penetanguishene The Nipissang Cannibals, and a Friendly Brother in the Wilderness 146

CHAPTER V. 7
CHAPTER VI.
Barrie and Big Trees A new Capital of a new District Nature's Canal The Devil's Elbow Macadamization
and Mud Richmond Hill without the Lass The Rebellion and the Radicals Blue Hill and Bricks 172
CHAPTER. VII. Toronto and the Transit The Ice and its innovations Siege and Storm of a Fortalice by the
Ice-king Newark, or Niagara Flags, big and little Views of American and of English Institutions Blacklegs
and Races Colonial high life Youth very young 195
CHAPTER VI. 8
CHAPTER VIII.
The old Canadian Coach Jonathan and John Bull passengers "That Gentleman" Beautiful River, beautiful
drive Brock's Monument Queenston Bar and Pulpit Trotting horse Railroad Awful accident The Falls
once more Speculation Water Privilege Barbarism Museum Loafers Tulip-trees Rattlesnakes The
Burning Spring Setting fire to Niagara A charitable Woman The Nigger's Parrot John Bull is a
Yankee Political Courtship Lundy's Lane Heroine Welland Canal 217
CHAPTER VIII. 9
CHAPTER IX.
The Great Fresh-water Seas of Canada 266
CANADA
AND
THE CANADIANS.
CHAPTER IX. 10
CHAPTER I.
Emigrants and Immigration.
Very surprising it seems to assert that the Mother Country knows very little about the finest colony which she
possesses and that an enlightened people emigrate from sober, speculative England, sedate and calculating
Scotland, and trusting, unreflective Ireland, absolutely and wholly ignorant of the total change of life to which
they must necessarily submit in their adopted home.
I recollect an old story, that an old gunner, in an old-fashioned, three-cornered cocked hat, who was my
favourite playfellow as a child, used to tell about the way in which recruits were obtained for the Royal
Artillery.

The recruiting sergeant was in those days dressed much finer than any field-marshal of this degenerate,
railway era; in fact, the Horse Guards always turned out to the sergeant-major of the Royal Military Academy
of Woolwich, when that functionary went periodically to the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, to receive and
escort the young gentlemen cadets from Marlow College, who were abandoning the red coat and drill of the
foot-soldier to become neophytes in the art and mystery of great gunnery and sapping.
"The way they recruited was thus," said the bombadier. "The gallant sergeant, bedizened in copper lace from
the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, and with a swagger which no modern drum-major has ever
presumed to attempt, addressed a crowd of country bumpkins.
"'Don't listen to those gentlemen in red; their sarvice is one which no man who has brains will ever think
of footing it over the univarsal world; they have usually been called by us the flatfoots. They uses the
musquet only, and have hands like feet, and feet like fireshovels.
"'Mind me, gentlemen, the royal regiment of the Royal Artillery is a sarvice which no gentleman need be
ashamed of.
"'We fights with real powder and ball, the flatfoots fights with bird-shot. We knows the perry-ferry of the
circumference of a round shot. Did you ever see a mortar? Did you ever see a shell? I will answer for it you
never did, except the poticary's mortar, and the shell that mortar so often renders necessary.
"'Now, gentlemen, at the imperial city of Woolwich, in the Royal Arsenal, you may, if you join the Royal
Artillery, you may see shells in earnest. Did you ever see a balloon? Yes! Then the shells there are bigger than
balloons, and are the largest hollow shot ever made the French has nothing like them.
"'And the way we uses them! We fires them out of the mortars into the enemy's towns, and stuffs them full of
red sogers. Well, they bursts, and out comes the flatfoots, opens the gates, and lets the Royal Artillery in; and
then every man fills his sack with silver, and gold, and precious stones, after a leetle scrimmaging.
"'Come along with me, my boys, and every one of you shall have a coat like mine, which was made out of the
plunder; and you shall have a horse to ride, and a carriage behind it; and you shall see the glorious city of
Woolwich, where the streets are paved with penny loaves, and drink is to be had for asking.'"
So it is with nine-tenths of the emigrants to Canada in these enlightened days; so it is with the emigrants from
old England, and from troubled Ireland, to the free and astonishing Union of the States of America and Texas,
that conjoint luminary of the new go-ahead world of the West.
Dissatisfied with home, with visionary ideas of El Dorados, or starving amidst plenty, the poorer classes
obtain no correct information. Beset generally with agents of companies, with agents of private enterprise,

CHAPTER I. 11
with reckless adventurers, with ignorant priests, or missionaries of the lowest stamp, with political agitators,
and with miserable traitors to the land of their birth and breeding, the poor emigrant starts from the interior,
where his ideas have never expanded beyond the weaver's loom or factory labour, the plough or the spade, the
hod, the plane, or the trowel, and hastens with his wife and children to the nearest sea-port.
There he finds no friend to receive and guide him, but rapacious agents ready to take every advantage of his
ignorance, with an eye to his scanty purse. A host of captains, mates, and sailors, eager to make up so many
heads for the voyage, pack them aboard like sheep, and cross the Atlantic, either to New York or to Quebec,
just as they have been able to entice a cargo to either port. Then come the horrors of a long voyage and short
provisions, and high prices for stale salt junk and biscuit; and, at the end, if illness has been on board, the
quarantine, that most dreadful visitation of all for hope deferred maketh the heart sick.
From the first discovery of America, there has been a tendency to exaggeration about the resources and
capabilities of that country a magniloquence on its natural productions, which can be best exemplified by
referring the reader to the fac-simile of the one in Sir Walter Raleigh's work on Guiana,[1] now in the British
Museum. Shakespeare had, no doubt, read Raleigh's fanciful description of "the men whose heads do grow
beneath their shoulders," &c.; for he was thirty-four years of age when this print was published, only
seventeen years before his death.
[Footnote 1: Brevis et admiranda descriptio REGNI GVIANÆ, AVRI abundantissimi, in AMERICA, sev
novo orbe, sub linea Æquinoctilia siti: quod nuper admodum, Annis nimirum 1594, 1595, et 1596 per
generosum Dominum Dr. GVALTHERVM RALEGH Equitem Anglum detectum est: paulo post jussa ejus
duobus libellis comprehensa. Ex quibus JODOCVS HONDIVS TABVLAM Geographicam adornavit, addita
explicatione Belgico sermone scripta: Nunc vero in Latinum sermonem translata, et ex variis authoribus hinc
inde declarata. Noribergæ. Impensis LEVINI HULSII. M.D.XCIX.]
So expansive a mind as Raleigh's undoubtedly was, was not free from that universal credulity which still
reigns in the breasts of all men respecting matters with which they are not personally acquainted; and the
glowing descriptions of Columbus and his followers respecting the rich Cathay and the Spice Islands of the
Indies have had so permanent a hold upon the imagination, that even the best educated amongst us have, in
their youth, galloped over Pampas, in search of visionary Uspallatas. Nor is it yet quite clear that the golden
city of El Dorado is wholly fabulous, the region in which it was said to exist not having yet been penetrated
by Science; but it soon will be, for a steamboat is to ply up the Maranon, and Peru and Europe are to be

brought in contact, although the voyage down that mighty flood has hitherto been a labour of several months.
The poor emigrant, for we must return to him, lands at New York. Sharks beset him in every direction,
boarding-houses and grogshops open their doors, and he is frequently obliged, from the loss of all his
hard-earned money, to work out his existence either in that exclusively mercantile emporium, or to labour on
any canal or railroad to which his kind new friends may think proper, or most advantageous to themselves, to
send him. If he escapes all these snares for the unwary, the chances are that, fancying himself now as great a
man as the Duke of Leinster, O'Connell, the Lord Mayor of London, or the Provost of Edinburgh, free and
unshackled, gloriously free, he becomes entangled with a host of land-jobbers, and walks off to the weary
West, there to encounter a life of unremitting toil in the solitary forests, with an occasional visit from the ague,
or the milk-fever, which so debilitates his frame, that, during the remainder of his wretched existence, he can
expect but little enjoyment of the manorial rights appendant to a hundred acres of wild land.
Let no emigrant embark for the United States unless he has a kind friend to guide and receive him there, and
to point out to him the good and the evil; for the native race look upon all foreigners with a jealous eye, and
particularly upon the Irish.
The Germans make the best settlers in that country, perhaps because, not speaking English, they cannot be so
easily imposed upon by the crimps, and also because they seldom emigrate before they have arranged with
CHAPTER I. 12
their friends in America respecting the lands which they are to occupy.
A society of British philanthropists has been established at New York to direct British emigrants in their
ultimate views; but it may well be imagined that these gentlemen, who are chiefly engaged in trade, cannot
descend to understand fully, or are constant witnesses of, the low tricks which are practised to seduce the
unwary ones.
The emigrant to Canada is somewhat differently situated.
The Irish come out in shiploads every season, and generally very indifferently provided and without any
definite object; nay, to such an extent is this carried, that hundreds of young females venture out every year by
themselves, to better their condition, which betterment usually ends in their reaching as far inland as Toronto,
where, or at other ports on the lakes, they engage themselves as domestics.
When we consider that nearly 25,000 emigrants leave the Mother Country every year for Canada alone, how
important is it that they should be informed of every particular likely to increase their comforts and to conduce
to their well-being! This kind of service can be but partially rendered by the present publication, which, being

intended for the general reader, cannot be given in a form likely to reach the class of emigrants who usually
proceed to America otherwise than through the advice which the reader may, whenever it is in his power,
kindly bestow upon them. But it will, I am persuaded, be extensively useful in that way, and also to the settler
with a small capital who can afford to consult it.
Learned dissertations upon colonization are useful only to the politician, and so much venality has prevailed
among those who have thrust themselves forward in the cause of Canadian settlement, that the public become
a little alarmed when they hear of a work expressly designed for the emigrant.
The very best informed at home, and the haute noblesse, have been repeatedly taken in. Dinnerings and
lionizing have been the order of the day for persons, who, in the colony, cut a very inferior figure. But this is
natural, and in the end usually does no harm. It is natural that the colonist, who is a rara avis in England,
should be considered a very extraordinary personage among men who seek for novelty in any shape; because
those who lavish favours upon him at one time and eschew his presence afterwards are usually ignorant of the
very history of which he is the type. It is like the standing joke of sending out water-casks for the men-of-war
built on the fresh-water seas of Canada, for there are plenty of rich folks at home who want only to be filled.
The different sorts of people who emigrate from home to the United States or Canada, may be classed under
several heads, like the travellers of Sterne.
First, the inquisitive and restless, who leave a goodly inheritance or occupation behind them, because they
have heard that Tom Smith or Mister Mac Grogan, very ordinary folks anywhere, have made a rapid fortune,
which is indeed sometimes the case in the United States, though rather rare there for old countrymen, and is
still more rare and unlikely in Canada, where large fortunes may be said to be unknown quantities.
Settlers of this class usually fall to the ground very soon if they settle in Canada, they become Radicals; if
they return from the States, they become Tories.
The next class are your would-be aristocratic settlers, younger sons of younger sons, cousins of cousins,
Union Barons, nephews' nephews of a Lord Mayor, or unprovided heirs in posse.
These fancy they confer a sort of honour by selecting the colony as their final resting-place, and that a
governor and his ministers have nothing in the world to think about but how they can provide for such
important units. Hence they frequently end by placing themselves in direct opposition to the powers that be, or
take very unwillingly to the labours of a farmer's life. Many of them, when they find that pretension is laughed
CHAPTER I. 13
at, particularly if no talents accompany it, which is rarely or ever the case, for talent is modest and retiring in

its essential nature, turn out violent Republicans or Radicals of the most furious calibre; but the more modest
portion work heartily at their farms, and frequently succeed.
Another class is your private gentlemen's sons and decent young farmers from England, Ireland, or Scotland,
who think before they leap, have connexions already established in Canada, and small capitals to commence
with. These are the really valuable settlers: they go to Canada for land and living; and eschew the land and
liberty system of the neighbouring nation. Wherever they settle, the country flourishes and becomes a second
Britain in appearance, as may be observed in the London and western districts.
It does not require a very lengthened acquaintance with Canada to form observations upon the characters of
the immigrants, as the Webster style of Dr. Johnson will have the word to be.
The English franklin and the English peasant who come here usually weigh their allegiance a little before they
make up their minds; but, if they have been persuaded that Queen Victoria's reign is a "baneful domination,"
they either go to the United States at once, or to those portions of Canada where sympathy with the Stars and
Stripes is the order of the day.[2]
[Footnote 2: That is, to those portions of the London and western district where American settlers abound,
who have so generously repaid the fostering care which Governor Simcoe originally extended to them. One of
those rabid folks indebted to the British government, who kept an inn, padlocked his pumps lately when a
regiment was marching through Woodstock in hot dusty weather, that the soldiers might not slake their thirst.]
If they be Scotch Radicals, the most uncompromising and the most bitter of all politicians, they seek Canada
only with the ultimate hope of revolutionizing it.
But the latter are more than balanced by the respectable Scotch, who emigrate occasionally upon the same
principles which actuate the respectable portion of the English emigrants, and by the hardy Highlanders
already settled in various parts of the colony, whose proverbial loyalty is proof against the arts of the
demagogue.
The great mass of emigrants may however be said to come from Ireland, and to consist of mechanics of the
most inferior class, and of labourers. These are all impressed with the most absurd notions of the riches of
America, and on landing at Quebec often refuse high wages with contempt, to seek the Cathay of their excited
imaginations westward.
If they be Orangemen, they defy the Pope and the devil as heartily in Canada as in Londonderry, and are loyal
to the backbone.
If they are Repealers, they come here sure of immediate wealth, to kick up a deuce of a row, for two shillings

and sixpence currency is paid for a day's labour, which two shillings and sixpence was a hopeless week's
fortune in Ireland; and yet the Catholic Irish who have been long settled in the country are by no means the
worst subjects in this Trans-Atlantic realm, as I can personally testify, having had the command of large
bodies of them during the border troubles of 1837-8. They are all loyal and true.
In the event of a war, the Catholic Irish, to a man and what a formidable body it is in Canada and the United
States! will be on the side of England. O'Connell has prophesied rightly there, for it is not in human nature to
forget the wrongs which the Catholics have suffered for the past ten years in a country professing universal
freedom and toleration.
The Americans of the better classes with whom I have conversed admit this, but their dislike of the Irish is
rooted and general among all the native race; and they fear as well as mistrust them, because, in many of the
CHAPTER I. 14
largest cities, New York for one, the Irish predominate.
The Americans say, and so do the Canadians, that, for some years back, since the repeal agitation at home, a
few very ignorant and very turbulent priests, of the lowest grade, have found their way across the Atlantic. I
have travelled all over Canada, and lived many years in the country, and have been thrown among all classes,
from my having been connected with the militia. I never saw but one specimen of Irish hedge-priest, and
therefore do not credit the assertion; this one came out last year, and a more furious bigot or a more republican
ultra I never met with, at the same time that he was as ignorant as could be conceived.
Such has not hitherto been the case with the Catholic priesthood of the Canadas. The French Canadian clergy
are a body of pious, exemplary men, not perhaps shining in the galaxy of science, but unobtrusive,
gentlemanly, and an honour to the soutane and chasuble.
The priests from Ireland are not numerous, for the Irish chapels were, till very lately, generally presided over
by Scotch missionaries; and I can safely say that, whether Irish or Scotch, the Catholic priesthood of Western
Canada will not yield the palm to their Franco-Canadian brethren of the cross, and that loyalty is deeply
inculcated by them. I have long and personally known and admired the late Bishop Mac Donell; a worthier or
a better man never existed. The highest and the lowest alike loved him.
I saw him bending under the weight of years, passed in his ministry and in the defence of his adopted country,
just before he left Canada, to lay his bones in his natal soil, preside over the ceremony of placing the first
stone of the Catholic seminary, for which he had given the ground and funds to the utmost of his ability.
He was a large, venerable-looking man, unwieldy from the infirmities of age and a life of toil and trouble; and

the affecting and touching portion of the scene before us was to see him supported on his right and left by the
arms of a Presbyterian colonel and a colonel of the Church of England.
This is true Christianity, true charity peace be to his soul!
His successor was a Canadian, equally free from pretension and bigotry; and he was succeeded by an
Irishman, whose mission is to heal the wounds of party and strife. He is living and in office; I cannot,
therefore, speak of him; but, differing as an Englishman so widely as I do in religious tenets from his, I can
freely assert that, if clergymen of every denomination pursued the same course of brotherly love that he does,
we should hear no more of the fierce and undying contention about subjects which should be covered with the
veil of benevolence and humility.
You cannot force a man to think as you do, to draw him into what you conceive to be the true path; mildness
and conciliation are much more likely to effect your object than the Emperor of China's yellow stick. The days
of the Inquisition, of Judge Jefferies, and of Claverhouse, are happily gone by; and the artillery of man's wrath
now vents its harmless thunders much in the same way as the thunders of the Vatican, or the recent
fulmination of the Archbishop of Paris against the author of the Wandering Jew; that is to say, with a great
deal of noise, but without much damnifying any one, as the public soon formed a true judgment of M. Sue and
of the tendency of his works.
On the other hand, how horrible it is, and what a fearful view of frail human nature is opened for a searching
mind to observe that a man, who professes to have abandoned the pleasures of existence, to have broken
through the very first law of nature, to have separated himself from his kind, and to have assumed perfection
and infallibility, the attributes of his Creator, devoting the altar at which he serves to the wicked purposes of
arraying man against man, and of embruing the hands held up before him at prayer in the blood of his
fellow-mortals!
But such is the inevitable tendency of the system of "I am better than thou," whether it be practised by a
CHAPTER I. 15
Catholic priest of the hedge-school, by a fanatic bawler about new light, or by a fierce and uncompromising
churchman. Faith, hope, and charity, are alike misinterpreted and misunderstood. Faith with these consists in
blind or hypocritical devotion to their peculiar opinions and dogmas; hope is limited to the narrowest circle of
ideas; and charity, Divine charity, exists not; for even the very relics, the mouldering bones of the defunct, are
not allowed to rest side by side; and as to those differing in the slightest degree from them, to them charity
extends not, however pious, however sincere, or however excellent they may be.

The people of England are very little aware how widely Roman Catholicism extends in the United States and
in Canada. From accurate returns, it has been ascertained that in the United States there were last year
1,500,000, with 21 bishops, 675 churches, 592 mission stations, and 572 priests otherwise employed in
teaching and travelling; 22 colleges or ecclesiastical establishments, 23 literary institutions, 53 female schools
or convents for instruction, 84 charitable hospitals and institutions, and 220 young students, preparing for the
ministry; whilst we learn, from the Annals of the Propaganda, that 1,130,000 francs were appropriated, in
May 1845, to the missions of America, or about £47,000 annually, of which the share for the United States,
including Texas, was 771,164 francs, or about £32,000 in round numbers.
Then again, the greater portion of the Indian tribes in the north-west and west, excepting near the Rocky
Mountains or beyond them, are Roman Catholics; and their numbers are very great, and all in deep hatred,
dislike, and enmity, to the Big Knives.
More than half a million of the Lower Canadians are also of the same persuasion, and their church in Upper
Canada is large and increasing by every shipload from Ireland. Even in Oregon, a Catholic bishop has just
been appointed.
It is more than probable, that in and around the United States three millions of Roman Catholic men are ever
ready to advance the standard of their faith; whilst Mexico, weak as it is, offers another Catholic barrier to
exclusive tenets of liberty, both of conscience and of person.
It is surprising how very easily the emigrants are misled, and how simply they fancy that, once on the shores
of the New World, Fortune must smile upon them.
There is a British society, as I have already stated, for mutual protection, established at New York; and the
government have agents of the first respectability at Quebec, at Montreal, and at Kingston. But the poorer
classes, as well as those whose knowledge of life has been limited, are sadly defrauded and deluded.
At a recent meeting of the Welsh Society at New York, facts were stated, showing the depravity and audacity
of the crimps at Liverpool and New York. The President of the Society said that, owing to the nefarious
practices against emigrants, the Germans first, then the Irish, after that the Welsh, and lastly the English
residents of the city had taken the matter in hand by the formation of Protective Societies.
The president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick observed that in Liverpool the poor emigrants were fleeced
without mercy; and he gave as one instance a fact that, by the representations of a packet agent, a large
number of emigrants were induced to embark on board a packet without the necessary supply of provisions,
being assured that for their passage-money they would be supplied by the captain an arrangement of which

the captain was wholly ignorant.
The president of the Welsh Society exhibited sixty dollars of trash in bills of the Globe Bank, that had been
palmed off upon an unsuspecting Welshman by some rascal in Liverpool, in exchange for his hoarded gold,
and declared that this was only one of a series of like villanies constantly occurring.
The ex-president of the St. George's Society, Mr. Fowler, mentioned a curious circumstance connected with
the history of New York. He said that he remembered the city when it contained only fifty thousand
CHAPTER I. 16
inhabitants, and not one paved side walk, excepting in Dock Street. Now it had a population of nearly
400,000, and had so changed, that he could no longer identify the localities of his youthful days.
Who, he asked, had done this? The emigrant! and it was protection they needed, not charity. He should have
added, that the great mass of the emigrants who have made New York the mighty city it now is, were Irish,
and that the native Americans have banded themselves in another form of protection against their increasing
influence.
The republican notions which the greater portion of the lower classes emigrating from the old country have
been drilled into, lead them to believe that in the United States all men are equal, and that thus they have a
splendid vault to make from poverty to wealth, an easy spring from a state of dependency to one of vast
importance and consideration. The simple axiom of republicanism, that a ploughman is as good as a president,
or a quarryman as an emperor, is taken firm hold of in any other sense than the right one. What sensible man
ever doubted that we were all created in the same mould, and after the same image; but is there a well
educated sane mind in America, believing that a perfect equality in all things, in goods and chattels, in
agrarian rights and in education, is, or ever will be, practicable in this naughty world?
Has nature formed all men with the same capacities, and can they be so exactly educated that all shall be
equally fit to govern?
The converse is true. Nature makes genius, and not genius nature. How rarely she yields a
Shakespeare! There has been but one Homer, one Virgil, since the creation. There was never a second
Moses, nor have Solomon's wisdom and glory ever again been attainable.
Look at the rulers of the earth, from the patriarchs to the present day, how few have been pre-eminent! Even
in the earliest periods, when the age of man reached to ten times its present span, the wonderful sacred writ
records Tubal-Cain, the first artificer, and Jubal, the lyrist, as most extraordinary men; and with what care are
Aholiab and Bezabel, cunning in all sorts of craft, and Hiram, the artificer of Tyre, recorded! Hiram, the king,

great as he undoubtedly was, was secondary in Solomon's eyes to the widow's son.
These men, says the holy record, were gifted expressly for their peculiar mission; and so are all men, to whom
the Inscrutable has been pleased to assign extraordinary talent.
Cæsar, the conqueror, Napoleon, his imitator, and Nelson, and Wellington, are they on a par with the rabble of
New York? Procul, O, procul este profani!
Pure democracy is an utter and unattainable impossibility; nature has effectually barred against it. The only
thing in the course of a life of more than half a century that has ever puzzled me about it is, that the Catholic
clergy should, in so many parts of the world, have lent it a helping hand. The ministers of a creed essentially
aristocratic, essentially the pillars of the divine right of kings, have they ever been in earnest about the matter?
Perhaps not!
If that giant of modern Ireland, the pacificator citizen king, succeeded in separating the island from Great
Britain, would he, on attaining the throne, or the dictatorship, or the presidency, or whatever it might be, for
the nonce, desire pure democracy? Je crois que non, because, if he did, he would reign about one clear week
afterwards.
Look at the United States, see how each successive president is bowed down before the Moloch altar; he must
worship the democratic Baal, if he desires to be elected, or re-elected. It is not the intellect, or the wealth of
the Union that rules. Already they seriously canvass in the Empire State perfect equality in worldly substance,
and the division of the lands into small portions, sufficient to afford the means of respectable existence to
every citizen. It is, perhaps, fortunate that very few of the office-holders have much substance to spare under
CHAPTER I. 17
these circumstances; but, if the President, Vice-President, and the Secretaries of State, are to live upon an acre
or two of land for the rest of their lives, Spartan broth will be indeed a rich diet to theirs.
When the sympathizers invaded Canada, in 1838-1839, the lands of the Canadians were thus parcelled out
amongst them, as the reward of their extremely patriotic services, but in slices of one hundred, instead of one
or two, acres.
But, notwithstanding all this ultra-democracy, there is at present a sufficient counterbalance in the sense of the
people, to prevent any very serious consequences; and the Irish, from having had their religion trampled upon,
and themselves despised, would be very likely to run counter to native feeling.
If any country in the whole civilized world exhibits the inequality of classes more forcibly than another, it is
the country which has lately annexed Texas, and which aims at annexing all the New World.

There is a more marked line drawn between wealth and pretension on the one hand, poverty and impertinent
assumption on the other, than in the dominions of the Czar. Birth, place, power, are all duly honoured, and
that sometimes to a degree which would astonish a British nobleman, accustomed all his life to high society. I
remember once travelling in a canal boat, the most abominable of all conveyances, resembling Noah's ark in
more particulars than its shape, that I was accosted, in the Northern States too, and near the borders, where
equality and liberty reign paramount, by a long slab-sided fellow-passenger, who, I thought, was going to ask
me to pay his passage, his appearance was so shabby, with the following questions:
"Where are you from? are you a Livingstone?" I told him, for I like to converse with characters, that I was
from Canada. "What's your name?" he asked. I satisfied him. He examined me from head to foot with
attention, and, as he was an elderly man, I stood the gaze most valiantly. "Well," he said, "I thought you were
a Livingstone; you have got small ears, and small feet and hands, and that, all the world over, is the sign of
gentle blood."
He was afterwards very civil; and, upon inquiring of the skipper of the boat who he was, I found that my
friend was a man of large fortune, who lived somewhere near Utica, on an estate of his own.
This was before the sympathy troubles, and I can back it with another story or two to amuse the reader.
Some years ago, when it was the fashion in Canada for British officers always to travel in uniform, I went to
Buffalo, the great city of Buffalo on lake Erie, in the Thames steamer, commanded by my good friend,
Captain Van Allen, and the first British Canadian steamboat that ever entered that harbour. We went in
gallantly, with the flag flying that "has braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze." I think the majority
of the population must have lined the wharfs to see us come in. They rent the welkin with welcomes, and,
among other demonstrations, cast up their caps, and cried with might and main "Long live George the
Third!" Our gracious monarch had for years before bid this world good night, but that was nothing; the good
folks of Buffalo had not perhaps quite forgotten that they were once, long before their city was a city, subjects
of King George.
I and another officer in uniform were received with all honours, and escorted to the Eagle hotel, where we
were treated sumptuously, and had to run the gauntlet of handshaking to great extent. A respectable
gentleman, about forty, some seven years older than myself, stuck close to me all the while. I thought he
admired the British undress uniform, but he only wanted to ask questions, and, after sundry answers, he
inquired my name, which being courteously communicated, he said, "Well, I am glad, that's a fact, that I have
seen you, for many is the whipping I have had for your book of Algebra." Now I never was capable of

committing such an unheard-of enormity as being the cause of flagellation to any man by simple or quadratic
equations; and it must have been the binomial theorem which had tickled his catastrophe, for it was my
father's treatise which had penetrated into the new world of Buffalonian education.
CHAPTER I. 18
It is a pity, is it not, gentle reader, that such feelings do not now exist?
Nevertheless, even now, the designation of a British officer is a passport in any part of the United States. The
custom-house receives it with courtesy and good-will; society is gratified by attentions received from a British
officer; and it is coupled with the feelings which the habits and conduct of a gentleman engender throughout
Christendom.
At New York, I visited every place worth seeing; and, although disliking gambling, races, and debating
societies, à outrance, I was determined to judge for myself of New York, of life in New York.
On one occasion, I was at a meeting of the turf in an hotel after the races, where violent discussions and heavy
champagning were going on. I was then (it was in 1837) a major in the army, and was introduced to one or
two prominent men in the room as a British officer who had been to see the racecourse; this caused a general
stir, and the champagne flew about like I am at a loss for a simile; and the health of Queen Victoria was
drunk with three times three.
On board a packet returning from England, we had several of the leading characters of the United States as
passengers. A very silly and troublesome democrat, of the Loco-foco school, from Philadelphia, made himself
conspicuous always after dinner, when we sat, according to English fashion, at a dessert, by his vituperations
against monarchy and an exhibition of his excessive love for everything American. The gentlemen above
alluded to, men who had travelled over Europe, whose education and manners made them that which a true
gentleman is all over the world, were disgusted, and, to punish his impertinence, proposed that a weekly paper
should be written by the cabin passengers, in which the occurrences of each day should be noted and
commented upon, and that poetry, tales, and essays, should form part of its matter.
They agreed to discuss the relative points and bearings of monarchy and democracy; they to depute one of
their number to be the champion of monarchy; and we to chuse the champion of democracy from amongst the
English passengers.
Two drawings were fixed up at each end of the table after dinner; one, representing a crowned Plum-pudding;
and the other, Liberty and Equality, by the well-known sign. The blustering animal was soon effectually
silenced; a host of first-rate talent levelled a constant battery at his rude and uncultivated mind.

I shall never forget this voyage, and I hope the talent-gifted Canadian lawyer who threw down the gauntlet of
Republicanism, and who has since risen to the highest honours of his profession which the Queen can bestow,
has preserved copies of the Saturday's Gazette of The Mediator American Packet-ship.
The mention of this vessel puts me in mind of one more American anecdote, and I must tell it, for I have a
good deal of dry work before me.
Crossing the Atlantic once in an American vessel, we met another American ship, of the same size, and
passed very close. Our captain displayed the stars and stripes in true ship-shape cordial greeting. Brother
Jonathan took no notice of this sea civility, and passed on; upon which the skipper, after taking a long look at
him with his spy-glass, broke out in a passion, "What!" said he, "you won't show your b d bunting, your old
stripy rag? Now, I guess, if he had been a Britisher, instead of a d d Yankee, he would not have been
ashamed of his flag; he would have acted like a gentleman. Phew!" and he whistled, and then chewed his cigar
viciously, quite unconscious that I was enjoying the scene.
But, if it be possible that one peculiar portion of the old countrymen are more disliked or despised than
another in any country under the sun, connected by such ties as the United States are with Britain, there can be
no doubt that the condition of the Jews under King John, as far as hatred and unexpressed contumelious
feeling goes, was preferable to the feeling which native Americans, of the ultra Loco-foco or ultra-federal
CHAPTER I. 19
breed, entertain towards the labouring Catholic Irish, and would, if they could with safety, vent upon them in
dreadful visitation. They would exterminate them, if they dared.
To account for such a feeling, it must be observed that a large portion of these ignorant and misguided men
have brought much of this animosity upon themselves; for, continuing in the New World that barbarous
tendency to demolish all systems and all laws opposed to their limited notions of right and wrong, and, whilst
their senseless feuds among themselves harass society, they eagerly seek occasions for that restless political
excitement to which they are accustomed in their own unhappy and regretted country.
A body of these hewers of wood and drawers of water, who, when not excited, are the most innocent and
harmless people in the world easily led, but never to be driven get employed on a canal or great public
work; and, no sooner do they settle down upon wages which must appear like a dream to them, than some old
feud between Cork and Connaught, some ancient quarrel of the Capulets and Montagues of low life, is
recollected, or a chant of the Boyne water is heard, and to it they go pell-mell, cracking one another's heads
and disturbing a peaceful neighbourhood with their insane broils.

Or, should a devil, in the shape of an adviser, appear among them, and persuade these excitable folks that they
may obtain higher wages by forcing their own terms, bludgeons and bullets are resorted to, in order to compel
compliance, and incendiarism and murder follow, until a military force is called out to quell the riots.
The scenes of this kind in Canada, where vast sums are annually expended on the public works, have been
frightful; and such has been the terror which these lawless hordes have inspired, that timid people have quitted
their properties and fled out of the reach of the moral pestilence; nay, it has been carried so far, that a Scotch
regiment has been marked on account of its having been accidentally on duty in putting down a canal riot;
and, wherever its station has afterwards been cast, the vengeance of these people has followed it.
At Montreal, the elections have been disgraced by bodies of these canallers having been employed to
intimidate and overawe voters; and, were it not that a large military force is always at hand there, no election
could be made of a member, whose seat would be the unbiassed and free choice of his constituents.
It is, however, very fortunate for Canada that these canallers are not usually inclined to settle, but wander
about from work to work, and generally, in the end, go to the United States. The Irish who settle are
fortunately a different people; and, as they go chiefly into the backwoods, lead a peaceful and industrious life.
But it is, nevertheless, very amusing, and affords much insight into the workings of frail human nature to
observe the conduct of that portion of the Irish emigrants who find that they have neither the means of
obtaining land, nor of quitting some large town at which they may arrive. Their first notion then is to go out to
service, which they had left Ireland to avoid altogether. The father usually becomes a day-labourer, the sons
farm-servants or household servants in the towns, the daughters cooks, nursery-maids, &c.
When they come to the mistress of a family to hire, they generally sit down on the nearest chair to the door in
the room, and assume a manner of perfect familiarity, assuring the lady of the house that they never expected
to go out to service in America, but that some family misfortune has rendered such a step necessary. The lady
then, of course, asks them what branch of household service they can undertake; to which the invariable reply
is, anything cook or housemaid, child's-maid or housekeeper, and that indeed they lived in better places at
home than they expect to get in America, such as Lord So-and-so's, or Squire So-and-so's.
The end of this is obvious; and a lady told me, the other day, she hired a professed cook, who was very shortly
put to the test by a dinner-party occurring a day or two after she joined the household. Her mistress ordered
dinner; and one joint, or pièce de resistance, was a fine fillet of veal. The professed cook, it appeared,
laboured under a little manque d'usage on two delicate points, for she very unexpectedly burst into her lady's
boudoir just as she was dressing for dinner, and exclaimed, "Mistress, dear, what'll I do with the vail?" "The

CHAPTER I. 20
veil?" said the dame, in horror; "what veil?" "Why, the vail in the pot, marm; I biled it, and it swelled out so,
the divil a get it out can I git it."
So with the farm-servants, they can all do everything; and an Irish gentleman told me that he lately hired a
young man, an emigrant, to plough for him; and, on asking him if he understood ploughing, the good-natured
Paddy answered, offhand, "Ploughing, is it? I'm the boy for ploughing." "Very well, I'm glad of it," said the
gentleman, "for you are a fine, likely young fellow, so I shall hire you." He hired him accordingly at high
wages ten dollars a month and provisions and lodging found. The first day he was to work, my friend told
him to go and yoke the oxen. Paddy stared with all his eyes, but said nothing, and went away. He staid some
time, and then returned with a pair of oxen, which he was driving before him. "Here's the oxen,
master!" "Where are the yokes, Paddy?" "The yokes! by the powers, is that what they call beef in Canady?"
Poor Paddy had been a weaver all his live-long days.
The Irish are almost exclusively the servants in most parts of the northern states and throughout Canada,
excepting the French Canadians, and very attached, faithful servants they frequently are; but notions of liberty
and equality get possession of their phrenological developments, and they are almost always on the move to
better their condition, which rarely happens as they desire.
Then another crying evil in Canada and in the States is the rage for dress. An Irish girl no sooner gets a
modicum of wages than all her thoughts are to go to chapel or church as fine or finer than her mistress. Nearly
every servant-girl in the large towns has a ridicule (that must be the proper way of spelling it), a bustle, a
parasol, an expensive shawl, and a silk gown, and fine bonnet, gloves, and a white pocket-handkerchief. The
men are not so aspiring, and usually don on Sundays a blue coat and brass buttons, white pantaloons, white
gloves, and a good fur cap in winter, or a neat straw hat or brilliant beaver in summer. The waistcoat is
nondescript, but the boots are irreproachable. A cigar has nearly replaced the pipe in the streets.
I will defy a short-sighted person to distinguish her nursery-maid from her own sister at a little distance; and,
being somewhat afflicted that way myself, I frequently nod to a well-dressed soubrette, thinking she is at least
a leading member of the aristocracy of the town; and this is the more amusing, as in all colonial towns and in
the haute societé of the Republic very considerable magnificence is affected, and a rage for rank and
pseudo-importance is not a little the order of the day. "Nothing," says a distinguished writer upon that most
frivolous of all threadbare subjects, etiquette, "nothing is more decidedly the sign of a vulgar-born or a
vulgar-bred person than to be ready to practise the art of cutting." I therefore bow to the well-dressed grisettes,

upon the principle of avoiding to be thought vulgar in mixed society by cutting a lady of tremendous rank; as I
would rather take a cook for a Countess, or a chambermaid for an Honourable, than be guilty of so much
rudeness.
You must not smile, gentle reader, and say cooks are often handsomer than Countesses, or chambermaids
prettier than Honourables; I am like the old man of the Bubbles of Brunnen, insensible to anything but the
beauties of nature. Neither must you think we have no Countesses nor Honourables in Canada. The former are
in truth raræ aves, but the latter why, every change of ministry creates a batch of them.
CHAPTER I. 21
CHAPTER II.
The Emigrant and his Prospects.
Those who really wish Canada well desire it to become a second Britain, and not a mere second Texas. Those
who wish it evil, and these comprise the restless, unprovided race of politicians under whose incessant
agitation Canada has so long groaned, desire its Texian annexation to the already overgrown States in its
vicinity.
That it may become a second Britain and hold the balance of power on the continent of America is my prayer,
and the prayer too of one who entertains no enmity towards the people of the United States, but who admires
their unceasing exertions in behalf of their country, who would admire their institutions, based as they are
upon those of England, if the grand design of Washington had been carried out, and perfect freedom of
thought and of action had been secured to the people, instead of a slavish awe of the mob, an absolute dread of
the uneducated masses, a sovereign contempt of the opinion of the world in accomplishing any design for the
aggrandizement of the Union, the most despotic and degrading oppression of all who presume to hold
religious opinions at variance with those of the masses, and the chained bondsman in a land of liberty!
To guard the respectable settler, who has a character at stake, and a family with some little capital to lay out to
better advantage than he can at home, against the grievous and often fatal errors which have been propagated
for sinister motives by needy adventurers who have written about Canada, or who are or have been agents for
the sake only of the remuneration which it brings, caring but little for the misery they have entailed, I have
undertaken to continue an account of this fine province, where nothing is provided by Nature except fertile
soil and a healthy climate; the rest she leaves to unremitting labour and to the exercise of judgment by the
settler.
As I have already inferred, this work will contain nothing vituperative of the United States, of that people who

are the grandchildren of Britannia, and whose well-being is so essential to the peace and security of
Christendom.
I shall endeavour to render it as plain and unpretending as possible, and shall not confine myself to studied
rules or endeavours to make a book, taking up my subject as suits my own leisure, which is not very ample,
and resuming or interrupting it at pleasure or convenience.
It will be necessary to enter more at large than in my preceding volumes into the resources of Canada, and, for
this end, Geology and other scientific subjects must be introduced; but, as I dislike exceedingly that heavy and
gaudy veil of learning, that embroidered science, with which modern taste conceals those secrets of Nature
which have been so partially unfolded, I shall not have frequent recourse to absurd Greek derivations, which
are very commonly borrowed for the occasion from technical dictionaries, or lent by a classical friend; but,
whenever they must occur, the dictionary shall explain them, for I really think it beneath the dignity of the
lights of modern Geology to talk as they do about the Placoids and the Ganoids, as the first created fishlike
beings, and of the Ctenoids and the Cycloids as the more recent finners. It always puts me in mind of
Shakespeare's magniloquence concerning "the Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their
shoulders, of antres vast and deserts idle," when he exhibited his learning in language which no one, however,
can imitate, and which he makes the lady seriously incline and listen to, simply because she did not
understand a word that was said. So it is with the overdone and continual changing of terms that now
constantly occurs; insomuch that the terms of plain science, instead of being simplified and brought within the
reach of ordinary capacities, is made as uncouth and as unintelligible as possible, and totally beyond the reach
of those who have no collegiate education to boast of, and no good technical dictionary at hand to refer to.
The present age is most prone to this false estimate of learning and to public scientific display. If science, true
science, yields to it, learning will very soon vanish from the face of the earth again, and nothing but monkish
CHAPTER II. 22
lore and the dark ages return.
There is a vast field open for research in Canada: it is yet a virgin soil, both as respects its moral and its
physical cultivation. Therefore, plain facts are the best, and those made as level to the eye as possible; for the
amusing mistakes which a would-be learned man makes, after a cursory perusal of anything scientific, only
subject him to silent derision.
A very old casual acquaintance of mine, a sort of man holding a rather elevated rank, but originally from the
great unwashed, who had risen by mere chance, aided by a little borough influence, was talking to me one day

about some property of his in Western Canada, which he fancied had rich minerals upon it. Accordingly, he
had taken a preliminary Treatise on Mineralogy in hand, and puzzled his brains in order to converse learnedly.
"My land," quoth he, "is Silesia, and has a great bed of sulphuret of pyrites." The poor gentleman, who had a
vast opinion of himself and always contradicted everybody about everything, meant that his soil contained a
deal of silica, and that iron pyrites was abundant in it.
The importance of the annual migration from Britain is best evidenced by the representation of the chief
emigrant agent at Quebec, subjoined.
In all the great sea-ports of England, Ireland, and Scotland, there are emigrant agents appointed by the
government, to whom application should always be made for information, by every emigrant who has not the
advantage of friends in Canada to receive and guide him; and these gentlemen prevent the trouble, expense,
loss of time, and fraud, to which the poor settlers are subjected by the crimps and agents, with whom every
sea-port abounds.
On their arrival in Canada, if ignorant of their way, they should apply at Quebec to the government principal
agent, who is stationed there for the lower or eastern part of Canada, and he will give them either advice or
passage, according to the nature of the case.
It is a pity that a rage exists for going as far west as possible at first, for this rage causes distress, and ends
frequently by their being kidnapped into settling in the United States.
If, however, they are determined to go on to Western Canada, their course is either to pay their own way, or to
obtain assistance from the government to send them on to Kingston, where another government agent for
Western Canada is stationed; and, as this gentleman has now acted in that capacity for many years, he
possesses a perfect knowledge of the country and its resources, and of the wants and objects of the settlers.
There is excellent land, and plenty of it to be obtained from the British American Land Company in Lower
Canada, in that portion called "The Townships," which adjoin the states of Vermont and New York; and,
excepting that the winters are longer, the climate more severe, it is as desirable as any other part of the
province, and, in point of health, perhaps more so, as it is sufficiently far from the great river and lakes to
make it less subject to ague; which, however, more or less, all new countries in the temperate zone, well
forested and watered, are invariably the seat of, and which is increased in power and frequency in proportion
to the neighbourhood of fresh water in large bodies, and the use of whiskey as a preventive.
From a statement of the number of emigrants to this colony for the last sixteen years, compiled by A.C.
Buchanan, Esq., chief emigrant agent, it appears that, in the five years subsequently to 1829, the emigration

from the British Isles was 165,793. From other sources, in the three years, from 1829 to 1832, the emigration
exceeded that of the previous ten years the numbers being respectively, 125,063 and 121,170. In 1832, the
emigrants arrived reached the high number of 51,746; but the cholera of that year was of so fatal a character
on the St. Lawrence, that the numbers in 1833 fell 22,062. This epidemic, coupled with the rebellions of '37
and '38, materially checked the increased emigration commenced in 1836. In 1838, the number was only
3,266, and in 1839, 7,500. But, since 1840, emigration has again recovered, and, during the period of
CHAPTER II. 23
navigation of 1845, it amounted to 27,354, of whom 2,612 arrived via the United States.
The United States, however, received by far the largest proportion of the emigration from Britain. At the port
of New York alone, from 1st November, 1844, to 31st October, 1845, there arrived
From England and Scotland 10,653 From Ireland 38,300 Total at New York 48,953
The number of emigrants landed at the port of Quebec, in 1845, was 25,375.
+ + | NUMBER OF EMIGRANTS SINCE 1829. |
| + + + + + | | |'29 to '33|'34 to '38|'39 to '43|'44 to '45| Total. |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |England. | 43,386 | 28,624 | 30,318 | 16,531 | 119,354 |
|Ireland. | 102,264 | 54,898 | 74,981 | 24,201 | 256,344 | |Scotland. | 20,143 | 10,998 | 16,289 | 4,408 | 51,838 |
|British American| | | | | | | Prov. &c. | 1,904 | 1,831 | 1,777 | 377 | 5,589 | |
| + + + + | | | 167,697 | 96,351 | 123,860 | 45,517 | 433,425 |
+ + + + + + +
Upper Canada would seem to have received the largest share of the influx of population. The increase in the
number of its inhabitants, between 1827 and 1843, is stated at 230,000.
The local government has for some few years past encouraged, although rather scantily, as Mr. Logan can, I
dare say, testify, an exploration of the natural resources of the Canadas, as far as geology and mineralogy are
concerned. Its medical statistics, its botany and zoology, will follow; and agriculture, that primary and most
noble of all applications of the mind to matter, is making rapid strides, by the formation of district and local
societies, which will do infinitely more good than any system of government patronage for the advancement
of the welfare of the people could devise.
The public works have also, for the first time, been placed under the control of the executive and legislative
bodies by the formation of a board, which is itself also subject to the supervision of the government.
But much remains to be done on this important head. A melancholy error was committed in making the

President, and consequently all the officers and employés, of the Board of Works, partizans of the ministry of
the day; thus paralyzing the efforts of a zealous man, on the one hand, by the fear of dismissal upon any
change of the popular will, and neutralizing his efforts whilst in office, by rendering his measures mere jobs.
This has been amended under Lord Metcalfe's administration; and it is to be hoped that the office of President
of the Board of Works will hereafter be one subjected to severe but not to vexatious scrutiny, and at the same
time carefully guarded against political influence, and only rendered tenable with honour by the capacity of
the person selected to fill it and of his subordinates. Canada is, as I have written two former volumes to prove,
a magnificent country. I doubt very much if Nature has created a finer country on the whole earth.
The soil is generally good, as that made by the decay of forests for thousands of years upon substrata, chiefly
formed of alluvion or diluvion, the deposit from waters, must be. It is, moreover, from Quebec to the Falls of
St. Mary, almost a flat surface, intersected and interlaced by numberless streams, and studded with small
lakes, whilst its littorale is a river unparalleled in the world, expanding into enormous fresh water seas,
abounding with fish.
If the tropical luxuries are absent, if its winters are long and excessively severe, yet it yields all the European
fruits abundantly, and even some of the tropical ones, owing to the richness of its soil and the great heat of the
summer. Maize, or Indian corn, flourishes, and is more wholesome and better than that produced in the warm
South. The crops of potato, that apple of the earth, as the French so justly term it, are equal, if not superior, to
those of any other climate; whilst all the vegetables of the temperate regions of the old world grow with
CHAPTER II. 24
greater luxuriance than in their original fields. I have successively and successfully cultivated the tomato, the
melon, and the capsicum, in the open air, for several seasons, at Kingston and Toronto, which are not the
richest or the best parts of Western Canada, as far as vegetation is concerned. Tobacco grows well in the
western district, and where is finer wheat harvested than in Western Canada? whilst hay, and that beauty of a
landscape, the rich green sod, the velvet carpet of the earth, are abundant and luxuriant.
If the majesty of vegetation is called in question, and intertropical plants brought forward in contrast, even the
woods and trackless forests of Guiana, where the rankest of luxuriance prevails, will not do more than
compete with the glory of the primeval woods of Canada. I know of nothing in this world capable of exciting
emotions of wonder and adoration more directly, than to travel alone through its forests. Pines, lifting their
hoary tops beyond man's vision, unless he inclines his head so far backwards as to be painful to his
organization, with trunks which require fathoms of line to span them; oaks, of the most gigantic form; the

immense and graceful weeping elm; enormous poplars, whose magnitude must be seen to be conceived;
lindens, equally vast; walnut trees of immense size; the beautiful birch, and the wild cherry, large enough to
make tables and furniture of.
Oh, the gloom and the glory of these forests, and the deep reflection that, since they were first created by the
Divine fiat, civilized man has never desecrated them with his unsparing devastations; that a peculiar race, born
for these solitudes, once dwelt amidst their shades, living as Nature's woodland children, until a more subtile
being than the serpent of Eden crept amongst them, and, with his glittering novelties and dangerous beauty,
caused their total annihilation! I see, in spirit, the red hunter, lofty, fearless, and stern, stalking in his painted
nudity, and displaying a form which Apollo might have envied, amidst the everlasting and silent woods; I see,
in spirit, the bearded stranger from the rising sun, with his deadly arms and his more deadly fire-water,
conversing with his savage fellow, and displaying the envied wealth of gorgeous beads and of gaudy clothing.
The scene changes, the proud Indian is at the feet of his ensnarer; disease has relaxed his iron sinews;
drunkenness has debased his mind; and the myriad crimes and vices of civilized Europe have combined to
sweep the aborigines of the soil from the face of the forest earth. The forest groans beneath the axe; but, after
a few years, the scene again changes; fertile fields, orchards and gardens, delight the eye; the city, and the
town, and the village spires rise, and where two solitary wigwams of the red hunter were once alone
occasionally observed, twenty thousand white Canadians now worship the same Great Author of the existence
of all mankind.
And to increase these fields, these orchards, these gardens, these villages, these towns, and these cities, year
after year, thirty thousand of the children of Britain cross the broad Atlantic: and what seeks this mass of
human beings, braving the perils of the ocean and the perils of the land? Competence and wealth! The former,
by prudence, is soon attainable; the acquisition of the latter uncertain and fickle.
No free grants of land are now given, but the settler may obtain them upon easy terms from the government,
or the Canada and British American companies.
The settler with a small capital cannot do better than purchase out and out. Instalments are a bad mode of
purchasing; for, if all should not turn out right, instalments are sometimes difficult to meet; and the very best
land, in the best locations, as we shall hereafter see, is to be had from 7s. 6d., if in the deep Bush, as the forest
is called; to 10s., if nearer a market; or 15s. and 20s., if very eligibly situated. Thus for two hundred pounds a
settler can buy two hundred acres of good land, can build an excellent house for two hundred and fifty more,
and stock his farm with another fifty, as a beginning; or, in other words, he can commence Canadian life for

five hundred pounds sterling, with every prospect before him, if he has a family, of leaving them prosperous
and happy. But he and they must work, work, work. He and all his sons must avoid whiskey, that bane of the
backwoods, as they would avoid the rattlesnake, which sometimes comes across their path. Whiskey and wet
feet destroy more promising young men in Canada than ague and fever, that scourge of all well watered
woody countries; for the ague and fever seldom kill but with the assistance of the dram and of exposure.
CHAPTER II. 25